File Audi's 'Green Police' Ad Under 'Creepy'

Feb. 11, 2010

Audi may win the award for most controversial Super Bowl ad this year.

The commercial for the clean diesel A3 TDI, the 2010 Green Car of the Year, featured the “Green Police” running around arresting perpetrators for various environmentally unfriendly practices. When a man asks for plastic at the grocery store, for example, a GP officer slams his head down on the checkout conveyor and says, “You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, Plastic Boy.” Other infractions include throwing away batteries, failing to compost orange peels, using incandescent light bulbs, or running a hot tub at too high a temperature.

At first, viewers may have been inclined to laugh, but after an A3 driver successfully bypasses a Green Police roadblock, the moral of the story is “Green has never felt so right.” Audi later explained that the ad certainly wasn’t intended to undermine envirofascist credibility: “The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.”

“Guide”? Right. Those chills up your spine are normal.

The ad isn’t that far off from reality. San Francisco, the “greenest” city in America, already mandates composting. Even Mayor Gavin Newsom Tweeted, “Ok .. That ‘green police’ Audi commercial hits home..” You don’t say.

* proposed fining and jailing people for the crime of driving with under-inflated tires;

* considered a bill banning cars with black paint from being sold (because black cars trap more heat in the summer and require more use of the air conditioner to make the driver comfortable);

* banned wood-burning fireplaces in new home construction (and restricts it in “grandfathered-in” homes from time to time by bureaucratic fiat); and

* outlawed 25 percent of flat-screen TVs on the market because a panel of bureaucrats say they use too much power;

I could list more examples, including a bit from the Audi ad that is actually true: Incandescent light bulbs will be contraband in the United States starting in 2012. Sure looks like the Green Police are real to me.

Such statism can be humorous at a distance, but when life imitates the joke, it stops being funny.